


Flounder

by serialfiller



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Post-Finale, Sad Will, Stream of Consciousness, allusions to, and suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:42:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5236460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serialfiller/pseuds/serialfiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because loving a monster feels like drowning, but even when he's dripping in poison, he keeps trying to swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flounder

Days are blurring at the edges, much like the towns and the bloodied corpses they have been leaving behind.

In the early days he kept a detailed account of everything that happened. Every word, every touch and landscape firmly engraved in the back of his memory palace. His feelings displayed in an altar for Hannibal to see, a shared hallway in gold and marble with a candle for each of the hearts he broke. The world was built on the way Hannibal looked at him, his eyes like whiskey pouring over his warm body, something so familiar and foreign to the endless sea of his. 

He found peace in the blood, bottled years of rage and pain, the beauty that he felt only he was capable of seeing and that he alone had had to understand. He found solace in the warm flesh of the man who had waited and killed, and killed, and killed to make him his. He found himself more himself. He found his scars didn't bother him.

But there's nothing peaceful about loving a monster, and he should know. He should know since nobody who has loved him has come out unscathed. Nobody who loves him gets out alive. Why would he be any different? Every animal is immune to its own poison, but Hannibal's poison is not the same as his, no matter how hard he tries to believe it when he's face down on the mattress and trembling as the older man fucks into him.

At times, he thinks that they can be happy. He thinks they'll find a peaceful place in a big city where people die all the time. A place that is full of evil, full of monsters like they are and they will feast on their blood and have barbecues on the weekends like people with picket fences do. At times he pictures himself, thirty years later, holding close the older man and whispering 'I love yous' against his neck. Other times he avoids mirrors for days because all he can see are shards of glass against Hannibal's throat. Or his own throat. Or Abigail's throat.

Sometimes he rages, sometimes he swelters and boils and kills on his own. Sometimes he tries to kill whatever it is he became because part of him is still Will Graham, not whatever Hannibal wanted him to turn into just so he could love him back. Sometimes he leaves, but there is nowhere for him to go.

He loves him, but he has taken everything. He can't even look at the sea the same way because loving a monster feels like drowning, but even when he's dripping in poison, he keeps trying to swim. That is the worst part of being a survivor, knowing that he will keep making it out alive.

Sometimes Hannibal knows, and Will can tell that he knows from the way he presses his fingers inside Will's mouth and touches his face. Sometimes he can tell that the taste of blood is not enough and Hannibal lies pliant under him and lets him think he can kill him. He offers up his neck and doesn't fight him and Will presses harder around his throat, the pulse of the man he loves a flutter that is fading, fading until it isn't there and he waits, and waits, and lets go and Hannibal forgives him and lets him tie him up again and again. But it's never enough, and he can't imagine anything ever will.

"You don't have to change to please me, Will," says Hannibal and it's a half truth around a mouthful of blood but Will nods and smiles and tries his best, his very very best to make sure he believes it.

"What we have is beautiful, Will," says Hannibal and he means every word, and he'd go to the end of the Earth for the younger man and if he could take it all back he'd still give up his freedom if it could mean Will would be happy.

But all Will can hear is "See? See?"

**Author's Note:**

> This might be a bit OOC but it wouldn't leave my brain. Thank you for reading! [I'm on tumblr and I take prompts.](http://serialfiller.tumblr.com)


End file.
